


The time of monsters

by Finnie



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 15:32:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14023296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Finnie/pseuds/Finnie
Summary: there is no way to prevent this. in every parallel reality or echo, this always happens. this is the only thing that could happen





	The time of monsters

there will be no warning.  
.

  
the doctor number three, the eccentric scientist one with the sticky-uppy hair and the stern scholarly voice is both difficult and the easiest to deal with. he's a petty, self-centered creature driven by a desire to show off nearly childlike for a creature that old. and like a child he's thoughtless, selfish, fearful. they fight and enjoy their banter, and when the master attacks it's always as easy as he can make it. it hurts his pride to chase after someone so endlessly bland and needy, but this doctor is nothing if not predictable, and there's some relief in that. they never suprise each other.

  
poor five, with his round eyes and his mop of blond hair, is confused. he isn't made stern enough to keep pace with the rest of himself, much too naive for the game he's caught up in. but when you get right down to it, he's the doctor as much as the others. when the master holds a match to something he'll still rush to save the day and pat his own back, and that desire pushes the limits of his boringness.

  
the tenth one, that frantic creature in a pinstripe suit with his too wide smiles, is such a pitiful thing, so cynical and clever to look at him, but that's a mask. this doctor wants to appear victorious, to be strong, but he's the most vulnerable of them all, poisoned by love. that works to the master's benefit, and that's the only time he actually goes through and tramples the world. this doctor is so willing to take him back that the master can barely look at him – his pleadings are driven by something else, a desperate, hopeless need to be understood by any creature.

  
number twelwe is something different altogether. he's by far the cleverest, the cruelest, the most cunning, but the most distant too. when they meet this time around, he spends every moment of dealing with the master weighing her words, trying to pry loose her plans. even if she couldn't feel every thought going through his head, she'd know his intentions – having her around isn't enough for a doctor like this; he tries to understand her, to avoid being hurt if in any way he can. too bad it's them. too bad it's how the story goes.

  
because the doctor – well, the less the master thinks about it, the better.

  
.

  
the master plots with the rani. during the short, vibrant orange dusk on earth, they might as well be back on gallifrey, ambitious, cruel schoolchildren. they were all oddities – no one ever leaves gallifrey, much less three all at once. and yet, here they are, trying to kill each others.

  
„what do you think of him?“ the rani asks.

  
„think of who?“ replies the master.

  
the rani eyes him.

  
„the doctor,“ she says. the master is slightly disappointed. that's not what the doctor would've said. he would have said: don't play stupid with me, master. the master does it sometimes with him, just because he likes being reminded that someone sees him as he really is.

  
„the doctor.“ the master repeats. „he's stupid. brave, but stupid.“

  
the rani scoffs. „why are we here, then?“

  
the rani knows he wouldn't say anything, but she likes to test people, probe at them like laboratory samples. she's a bit restless too, maybe because of the doctor. the rani has alway been obsessed with experiments, and the doctor is nothing if not the most interesting specimen.

  
„why does one kill an annoying fly?“ muses the master. the rani tilts her head to the side and says nothing. playing stupid had once repulsed him, but now almost nothing can.

  
„we'll have to be careful with him,“ he says. „he's naive, so ensnaring him will be easy, but keeping him will be hard. he has a tendency of slipping through your fingers. he's not the sort to be snatched by just anybody.“

  
the master realizes that he sounded almost fond, and it sends an spike of resentment through his gut.

  
„then why don't you deal with him?“ the rani asks.

  
he laughs. „oh, i'll have my turn. but it'll be much better if we have some fun first. you know, the classic thing, set up a moral dilemma, watch him play the hero. he so loves playing the part.“

  
„and so do you.“

  
„don't be foolish,“ the master snaps. „the doctor is merely a past-time of mine, he just happens to be a bit more of a challenge than the others. you can't tell me that doesn't excite you at least a little."

  
she hums at that. if immortality's taught time lords one thing, it's that eternity is boring.

  
„you're ever so funny, you.“ she says. „you should be grateful. i want him gone fast and clean, but i'm letting you have your fun.“

  
he thinks, so what? her say in this means nothing. nothing ever changes here, the master and the doctor least of all. she'll be dust by the time they catch each other.

  
he says, „and he will be.“

  
.

  
the trouble is that the master would only have him on his own terms, as would the doctor. it's a dance they've danced before. so every time they inevitably betray each other, they're surprisingly little offended. such manipulative tactics remind them pleasantly of their youth. cruel as it is, it's only play pretend, even when people die, and universes almost burn.

  
until one day it's not a game anymore, but a war that eats the universe. there isn't a time war museum. there are no memorials, no graveyards, because there's nothing left to display. no weaponery or uniforms or wrecked bits of dalek. everything burned, space swallowed it all. space has it in it to eat everything, to wash it away, force it apart and swallow, gorge itself on memories and things-that-never-were.

  
(time eats time.)

  
in the end the doctor stands alone next to an empty battlefield grave. the master is buried as he had lived, without honors and titles. rassilon smirks a little as they offer their condolences, and the doctor presses his lips into a bitter line, and doesn't leave for days

  
the master's entire existance had been theft, living on borrowed time, every breath stolen, every step paid in someone else's blood. he was a creature of deception and survival, and he'd keep kicking and clawing his way forward until there's no more regenerations to milk out, no more bodies to steal, and then he'd drain the stars.

  
so when the master dies on the doctor, it's the absolute proof that there's nothing worth ruining left in the universe, because if there was, the master would sniff it and crawl out to finish it off.

  
(despite him being dead, the doctor wonders if the master felt it when he burned gallifrey, wonders if he knew it was him, wonders if he smiled.)

  
.

  
the master never remembers being dead. he's always back, for some reason. survival is a bit like a drug – there's no point to it, but he never stops. you survive, and that's it.

  
dying in the doctor's arms feels strangely devious, though, vengeful even. what do you do when i'm gone, he wants to ask the doctor. How do you live with yourself? he hopes the doctor will treasure it too, hopes he'll feel the blood on his hands a long time after, hopes he'll feel like he's missing something, like a string he's been holding on to for who knows how long finally snapped.

  
(because he's derranged. ask anyone.)

  
.

  
"i let myself be killed because i knew that my followers would bring me back", the master screams more at the sky than at the doctor the next time they meet amidst a lonely junkyard on earth. the master is exposed, poorly ressurected, bleached and terrifying.

  
think you just wanted to die, the doctor doesn't reply.

  
in the end of time, the doctor has a gun pointed at the spot between the master's eyes. the doctor's hands shake like the frightrened thing he is now, and in the end he cannot do it. in the end, the master kills rassilon and not him.

  
being murdered by the doctor, the master thinks as he fades out, is a strangely nice fantasy.

  
.

  
there are little things that come around in every regeneration, and admit it or not, when he sees the elegant posture of the tall, dark-haired woman with all the sharp edges of her face and her half-mocking smirk that suggests a joke you're missing, the doctor knows, and perhaps he's known from the beginning. looks don't have it in them to fool: when the master is lying to the doctor, they always look the same.

  
and he'd rather not, the doctor thinks, he'd rather not. he wonders for how long the master has been alive, for how long she'd let the doctor be eaten out by grief and the memories of all their lives and deaths, what horror she's brought on her heels this time.

  
right before the master kisses him the doctor knows that she'll smell of blood.and he thinks about how it's something he will always know. a moment passes and he doesn't know what the master is thinking, but it must be very bad, evil even.

  
you win, says the doctor as he holds the gun out, knowing he won't shoot.

  
i know, the master smiles. she looks small and regretful, but the doctor knows she's anything but.

  
.

  
there will be no warning.

  
the knife is thrust in and the other one's shifty snake eyes still, caught in disbelief and the absurdity of the situation. for a moment, he's just standing there, hanging off the edge of his own dagger, stopped at last – captured, held, caught in his own trap.  
there will be no warning.

  
the other master smiles, a calm, collected wicked smirk, the tipping point of a conflict that lasted for longer than the human race has been looking at the stars. there's more than meets the eye in that smile: a slight enjoyment at the ironic scene unravelling before her, a twinge of regret because the master is still the master, and beneath all that, in a dark and grim way, relief.

  
it's well tucked away underneath a lot of violence. the master would know, though. the master always knows.

  
„why?“ he spits. there is no need for explanations, none for accusations.

  
„just wait.“ she whispers. „you'll suffer too.“

  
„why,“ he repeats.

  
„because,“ she says, the smile intact. „i'm ending the arguement.“

  
his eyes widen as she leans into the touch and twists the knife inside him. „and it was the only arguement worth having.“

  
.

  
stripped to the barest fundamentals, the master is destruction – of that which they despise, of that which they love, and above all, themself. the funniest part is that she knows, that some tiny part of her remembers what comes next, the price of betraying oneself. that's why she laughs when the laser beam hits her in the back and fries her brain.

  
and they both laugh, because in a way, they both should've known better.

  
and they laugh, because in their last conscious second it dawns to them that they've both made this happen, here, now. they're both counterreactions to one another, and they've changed nothing at all: she is in his future and he has always been in her past.

  
there is no way to prevent this. in every parallel reality or echo, this always happens. this is the only thing that could happen. but perhaps, somewhere, in a universe not completely unlike this one…

  
together, laughing, they slip away from time.

  
there will be no warning.

 

 

 

 


End file.
